At the Stanford 2005 Net Impact Conference, organized by the Stanford Graduate School of Business, international leaders explain in a panel discussion what they do to help entrepreneurs create, grow, and sustain businesses and social ventures. Pamela Hartigan discusses the Schwab Foundation's mission to advance the practice of social entrepreneurship globally by building and supporting its community of practitioners. Bruce McNamer talks about the work of TechnoServe, a U.S.-based nonprofit that is helping entrepreneurs in poor rural areas build to businesses that create income, opportunity, and economic growth for their families, communities, and countries. Jacqueline Novogratz shares how the Acumen Fund, a nonprofit global venture fund, is working to solve the problems of global poverty by delivering affordable critical goods and services, such as health, housing, and water, to the poor in South Asia and Africa.
Dr. Pamela Hartigan is the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship’s first managing director. She also is an adjunct professor in social entrepreneurship at Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia, and has been a visiting fellow at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University. Throughout her career, Hartigan has held varied leadership positions in multilateral health organizations and educational institutions, as well as entrepreneurial nonprofits. She has been responsible for conceptualizing and creating new organizations, departments, or programs across a variety of institutional arrangements and multi-stakeholder platforms. She holds master's degrees in economics and public health, and a doctorate in cognitive psychology.
Jacqueline Novogratz is founder and CEO of Acumen Fund. Prior to starting Acumen, she worked at the Rockefeller Foundation, where she created and directed The Philanthropy Workshop and The Next Generation Leadership program. Novogratz has also worked at the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, and has served as a consultant to UNICEF and the World Bank in various African countries. She helped found a micro-finance institution for women in Rwanda and began her career in international banking with Chase Manhattan Bank. Novogratz holds an MBA from Stanford and a BA from the University of Virginia.
Bruce McNamer is president and CEO of TechnoServe. Before joining TechnoServe in 2004, McNamer's career spanned the public and private sectors. He was COO of Verified Identity Pass, Inc., CFO of Appfluent Technology, and VP of business development at Varsity Group. He has also worked as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley, and as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company. McNamer was a White House Fellow, a director at the National Economic Council from 1998-1999, and a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay. He has an AB from Harvard and a JD/MBA from Stanford.